TGN Focus – What Happens To Your YouTube Channel When Your Game Dies?

Your YouTube audience is likely pretty fickle if it’s anything like the majority of audiences out there. Despite having gamer loyalty on our sides, sometimes games just die and it can be a pretty detrimental a YouTube channel if you’re not willing to make a change. We call this “being agile,” and it can be an important element of success for any business – especially one that depends on an audience. With the right amount of agility, you’re ready if something happens and not stuck pondering exactly how you should be flipping your table.

Just like the well-crafted infographic above, there are really only two steps to being agile with your YouTube channel:

1. Preparation

“Think of your contingency plan like

the escape route for an airplane…”

Well Mark, now you’ve gone all “Captain Obvious” on us. Hear me out. Preparedness isn’t just a state of mind folks, it’s actually a pretty important part of running a business (i.e., a YouTube channel). To me, preparation consists of a contingency plans, situational awareness, and a proactive mindset.

Think of your contingency plan like the escape route for an airplane: you really hope you never have to use it, but you know that it’s there if things get ugly. This means planning out new content ideas that could either ramp up quickly from scratch, or starting up a second or third vein of content to stabilize your viewership and spread your “audience equity” a little bit more.

Situational awareness means doing your research to stay in the loop about what might happen to the games or content that you cover. Not only will research inform your content even better, it will help you pre-empt situations for your content so you can be proactive. Being proactive is pretty self-explanatory, but it means using your situational awareness to make decisions about events before they even happen. You may not always be accurate, but you can always return to your bread and butter if the scare is avoided. Better safe than sorry!

“Being true to yourself will keep your

loyal subscribers happy…”

2. Making the “Right” Choice

Note that I’ve put the word “right” in quotations, because who knows really if your decision is right or wrong, but what I mean by this is very important to your own happiness with your channel on YouTube. However you prepare, and however you pivot your content to deal with the changing gaming industry – be happy with what you’re doing. Don’t just switch to a game that you’re not passionate about because it’s the top-notch performer in the industry right now. Being true to yourself will keep your loyal subscribers happy, and will boost your own enthusiasm about your content. Enthusiasm is infectious when it’s genuine, so smile, laugh, and do what you do.